Review: Abstract Comics

Every couple of months or so, another article will come out considering the question of “Are comics literature?” Much has been discussed about the value of graphic novels with attempts to place them alongside prose books.

Less has been discussed about comics as art, however.

Abstract Comics (2009, Fantagraphics) tries to make the case for the latter. On one hand, it succeeds beautifully. On the other hand, it’s really hard to say if some these are truly “comics.”

The book is designed beautifully — editor Andrei Molotiu presents this book like an exhibition catalog and the oversized pages are filled with rich blacks and vibrant colors. It’s maybe not quite a coffee table book, but it’s a lovely one to leave lying around to flip through idly.

The content serves as a great introduction to a genre of comics that few people knew existed. Molotiu takes somewhat of a scholarly approach to the content, placing the concept of abstract comics within art history in his introduction. He makes a good case.

Obviously, some of these are absolutely what I think of comics. Robert Crumb’s “Abstract Expressionist Ultra Super Modernistic Comics” is done in his classic style, even if it lacks a narrative, and Mike Getsiv‘s “Shapes,” with its swirl of colors, has plenty of movement. Henrik Rehr‘s “Storms” is powerful as it builds, evoking the chaos of storms. Mark Gonyea and James Kochalka also provide interesting contributions — abstract, certainly, as the title of the book would imply, but very much grounded in the traditional sequential form of comics.

Other works in the book, I think it’s a stretch to call comics. In fact, I think it’s a stretch to even say they’re sequential art. Tim Gaze’s series of splotchy patches of black ink, segmented randomly, are appealingly disorganized, but they don’t seem to move from one to the next with clear transitions. Richard Hahn‘s bicolored paintings, divided into tiny, uneven boxes, are lovely and soothing, but don’t say “comics” to me at all. I understand that some of this is just a matter of personal opinion — you may think they’re comics whereas I don’t — but some of this feels like a stretch.

And you may have noticed that everyone I’ve listed so far is a man. There is not one woman creator featured in this book. The Abstract Comics blog features a couple — such as Satu Kaikkonen and Nina Roos — so I’m going to think their work was discovered too late for inclusion here and it wasn’t some intentional oversight. Still, I would’ve loved to have seen more diversity in the creators featured in this book.

Overall, this is a cool concept and I was surprised by it. I think it’s definitely going to cause some debates about what comics are and are not, and that’s a good thing. I’m going to enjoy revisiting this book, even if I don’t agree that all of the works featured here are comics.

3 comments

Thanks for your review! I just wanted to address the issue of there being no women creators in the book. Unfortunately, this is avant-garde art comics we are talking about, which is already a pretty male-dominated field, and I honestly couldn’t find any women working in this genre (I did ask around!). You are right about Satu and Nina coming to my attention too late. Actually, Satu, who is primarily a visual poet, only began making abstract comics in April, after she had discovered our blog (thus long after the book had gone into production). I only found out about Nina a couple of months ago: as she has said herself in a post on abstractcomics.blogspot.com, it was only last year that she began being interested in abstract sequential art–and, once again, she started producing much more of it after discovering our blog. If the book is successful enough to warrant a second volume, it’s a pretty safe bet that they will be featured in it–as well as, hopefully, other women creators encouraged by the book to try their hand at abstract comics.

I should add that “Silent Pictures,” the exhibition at CUNY’s James Gallery which I am co-curating and which is partly based on the anthology, will feature Nina Roos’s work, and will also feature larger (non-abstract) pieces from two of my favorite women cartoonists, Renee French (who is installing a huge, 12′ x 12′ mural) and Rachel Cattle (who is showing films based on her comics).

I came across your post while looking up info on AC. Excellent job. I touched on some of the same ideas, though one thing I didn’t touch on (but also noticed) was the exclusion of female cartoonists. I find it odd that this niche is completely male dominated but that might just be an issue of small sample size.

[…] (kudos to editor Andrei Molotiu and the Fantagraphics team), brings up an interesting argument I’ve already seen touched on, and one that I wanted to explore a little deeper here: at what point do you stop calling something […]